Essays on topics economics: monopolists, oligopolists, and oligarchs aren't better decision-makers for the society just because they's rich and they ain't the gummint.

Anarchy Favors the Rich

He's a fucking moron.-- Rex Tillerson/2017 (guess who he is?)

Today, states containing just 17 percent of the American population, a historic low, can theoretically elect a Senate majority-- Emily Badger/2016

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. -- Victor Hugo/1845

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption; mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation's economic machinery.-- Marriner Eccles

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.-- Neil deGrasse Tyson/2015 (possibly earlier)

For the median household in the U.S., a top corporate marginal rate cut from 35 to 20 percent would boost wage growth almost four-fold -- from the current 0.6 percent per year to as much as 2 percent, providing up to $7000 of additional income.-- Kevin Hassett/2017Hassett's argument is that if we stop artificial 'profit shifting' (corporations reporting that their profits were earned in low-tax countries, when they were really earned in the U.S.), then somehow they'll magically decide to raise wages for U.S. workers. It makes no sense.-- Seth Hanlon/2017

06 July 2016

Mea Culpa

Those that took, and remember, Freshman English Composition also likely remember the First Rule: Never, ever, begin an essay with "I".

I was wrong. And, it turns out, that's a Good Thing, by some small measure. Not being of Europe, I follow USofA news sources, and until the Brexit mess, coverage of the EU dealt with it as a monetary union, and even implied that it was such only. Some may recall musing in these endeavors that such a single-sided union, with Germans calling the tune for the other 27, was destined to fail. Just as the USofA ships moolah from rich corners to poor corners through fiscal policy, a German controlled solely monetary union benefits Germany and subjugates 27.

Quoting as much of the article in order to bolster my earlier musing, would mean putting nearly all of it here. Just go read it. The unambiguous point: the ingrate poor corners have cut off their noses to spite their faces. Stupid redneck Brits are just as easily gulled as the USofA variety.

But many of the poorer places in Britain that receive the most aid from Europe also voted decisively to leave. Promises were made by the leaders of the so-called Leave campaign that exiting the European Union would lead to a bonanza of money no longer being sent to Brussels, the seat of the European government. After the vote, they almost immediately retreated from those promises, leaving the future of aid programs funded by Europe in peril.

And, just as USofA rednecks believe, Muslims were the problem.

At the end of the day, we're an island. We can take only so much population.

Of course, all nations are islands. Some are hemmed in by water, and some by surveyors' chains. The USofA Right Wingnuts still view this land as virgin territory to be taken from heathen red people. Most of what isn't populated can't ever be. And a lot of what is shouldn't be. The largest share of USofA electricity goes to air conditioning. None of that, and no Atlanta or all of Texas. Most of the southwest is desert. With golf courses.